The sorcerer behind him halted mid chant. I heard his sharp intake of breath even if Hunter did not.
"I do love you," Hunter said. "You need to know that. But it's over. Goodbye, Skye."
He could have just dropped my head, but he did have the grace to ease it onto the grass. A fragrant thread of chamomile tickled my ear. I smelled apples, a bit of weedy moss.
And then sulfur.
He stretched ever so slowly over my chest. I watched him reach for Excalibur.
The whirlwind of smoke came next and I saw the sorcerer stagger backwards, his arms flung across his chest in a defensive motion. He fell without uttering a single word.
Then the smoke was gone.
In its place, snarled the viscous beast I'd met on my doorstep. Its eyes were as red as glowing coals and they landed on the back of Hunter's head.
"Took you long enough," I said, and then everything went black.
The blackness wasn't unconsciousness. Not at first. It was a moving, stinking darkness that swept through the air, pulling debris from the ground into a vortex above me. The air fired up with heat. Energy pulsed through me the way a scream pierces an eardrum.
I squeezed my eyes closed and prayed for unconsciousness to claim me.
I thought I heard screaming. No. Not just simple screaming. Wailing. The biblical verse that spoke of a wailing and gnashing of teeth leapt to my mind and I realized in some part of my being, if I could hear, if I could think, I wasn't dead.
I wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse. I couldn't move. I could barely open my eyes and when I did, it was to a landscape that had tilted on three axises. The air warbled with smoke and dust and I felt off-kilter, as though I was about to pitch over the edge of some precipice.
I caught sight of Hunter face down on the ground, his chin jutting toward me as he strained to keep hold of the earth and not get pulled backward into whatever had hold of him. His eyes bled streams of red tears that welled on his cheeks and sizzled there like egg whites on a hot frying pan before lifting to the air as black smoke.
His fingers clawed at me. I thought I saw his skin lift from his bones as though being peeled away strip by strip. They waved in the air like flags of surrender and only after being buffeted by the breeze, did the smoke consume his flesh. His skin seemed no more tangible in those moments than mist on a sunny morning.
He died with a whimper.
And I finally passed out.
SOMEONE WAS WRESTLING with me, trying to roll me over. I wanted to be left alone. My stomach hurt. There was a gnawing feeling eating at me all the way through to my spine.
All I wanted to do was curl around it.
The hands didn't care. They flipped me over mercilessly.
"Get up, Skye," said a voice. A masculine, smoky voice.
My eyelids were peeled open by insistent fingers and I caught sight of a figure above me. He looked like the tall man from the market, the one who was with the woman who owned the locket.
Stubble on his chin. Brilliant green eyes.
But that couldn't be right. He'd be back in New Denver, not hovering over me. There was only me here. Me and Hunter and the Dark sorcerer.
And the hell hound.
It came back to me, then. I'd tempted Hunter willfully, knowing the guardian would not let him take the sword. It had been a risk, a terrible one, one I knew I might not live through.
But apparently I had.
I was still alive.
For now.
"Are you taking me to hell?" I said.
"No, I'm taking you home."
"Home," I mumbled in echo. It had a strangely comforting ring.
Home, however, turned out to be the hellish back of Gentry's rump. After an awful few moments of blistering pain, wherein the hands pulled and tugged at me and yanked me to my feet. In which they dragged me, kicking and screaming across several yards. After which, I blacked out, then came too again as I was being rolled onto my horse's back.
My hands were forced to grip his reins.
I kept slipping to the side, but I wasn't sure why. I'd never had a hard time riding him before. And why was I lying on him face down instead of sitting high in the saddle?
I lifted a hand to my bleary vision. Waved it back and forth in front of my face.
It was coated in red. Blood, I realized.
Oh. That was right. Hunter had wounded me.
Hadn't I gone down this path of thought once before?
I blinked as I tried to recall the fight. I winced as I remembered Hunter's blade slicing through my belly. Was he still here? Was his sorcerer working his magic?
I tried to crane a look over my shoulder and only saw my grandmother's house looking as sedately quiet as it had when I'd arrived.
The only difference was two smoking holes in the yard and one very large patch of bloody grass.
"Lance?" I murmured, the first name to come to my mind, although he couldn't possibly hear me. He was back in New Denver, fighting Hunter's army.
"Here," said a voice from beside me.
I swung my gaze sideways in surprise. He was there all right. His mouth was set in a grim line. He held Excalibur in front of his chest, the blade glinting in a wash of blue light. The sun was setting. It painted the sky in fire.
"Can you feel it?" I asked. "It vibrates."
"Indeed," Lance said.
I wanted to say he shouldn't be holding it at all, because that was what Hunter had done, and now he was dead. Gone. Dragged to Hell kicking and screaming.
"He cried," I said. "He called out for me."
"Like a baby," Lance said. "But don't worry about him. He's gone."
He stuffed Excalibur into its scabbard and slung the holster over Gentry's back. I felt much better knowing Lance had escaped the hell hound. Maybe the beast was too busy munching on Hunter's thigh to protect the blade.
Or maybe there was no reason to retrieve the sword or protect it from an enemy because I wasn't dead.
But I was close. The smell of sulfur was all around me.
"Careful," I said to Lance. "The hell hound is watching."
Lance smirked and slapped Gentry's rump. The feel of him racing toward New Denver was enough to make me beg for unconsciousness again.
My body was kind if not resilient.
When I woke again, I was lying on my back. I wasn't trouncing about, slipping and falling and fighting to stay on a moving bed of muscle and bone.
I felt wrapped up, and tucked in and entirely too hot.
My eyes fluttered over the ceiling. My ceiling, I realized. At least, the ceiling from my room in Colton Musk's estate. I supposed I could call it mine.
I tried to push myself up onto my elbows, but someone laid a palm down gently on my chest.
"Hold on," said a familiar voice.
"Lance," I said, clearing my throat. It felt raw. As though I hadn't spoken in days. I coughed and my stomach burned.
"Be still," he said. "Marlin did the best he could, and the nymphs added some of their magic, but you still aren't completely healed."
It all rushed back then, my fight with Hunter. My bleary sometimes conscious ride home.
"Thank you," I said.
He had cuts and abrasions on his face. His eyebrow was split down the middle.
"You were lucky," I said.
"I'll say," he said, touching a finger to his eyebrow. "One more inch and I'd be blind."
"Not that," I said. "Excalibur. You took a chance taking it from me."
He gave me a queer look but said nothing.
"The town?" I asked, remembering the reason for all that in the first place.
"Safe," he said.
It was all I needed to hear. I closed my eyes and slept some more, grateful that the town had survived. That it would thrive given the time.
In the days while I recuperated and ran over what I was going to tell people about Hunter, Marlin came and checked on me several times, and dressed my bandages.
He had a light
touch, gentle hands that probed discreetly over my skin. the hands of a healer.
Gal came. And Myste. Twice, they came together and I realized looking at them, that they had found something more together than knighthood.
Dallas sent a street rat to me with a horde of books and the message that he had to find a new hideout because the townsfolk knew where he squatted. I didn't expect to see him for weeks. The rat also mentioned that Chas had left town. I felt bad about that, but I knew he'd need to work that out for himself. I wished I could have explained that my wounds were my own doing and not something he brought on me.
Sadie sent word she and Sam and their new son would be back in town as soon as the child was weaned. It was something to look forward to, and I fed my imagination with the stories I would tell him.
Lance visited me for hours at a time too. He sometimes brought a book and held it for me so I could read. To be honest, those bouts of feasting on stories were short. My eyes hurt and my focus was off but sometimes I read out loud as his finger ran along the text.
Sometimes, he sounded out words with me.
Lance informed me that Myste had got the EMP working just before the army arrived and that Hunter's men hadn't done as much damage as they could have. Most of them had been conscripts or mercenary anyway and when met with resistance, were loathe to fight. Especially when the magic they nymphs deployed couldn't be overcome. When the EMP shut down the power, and they met with all the traps we'd set, touched the mustered objects and burned themselves, they lost faith in battle and what it could bring.
The envoys from Topeka and Albuquerque survived the battle and left the next day to tell their leaders that what had happened in new Denver was nothing short of a miracle.
He'd said this last with a lowered gaze.
"You're the miracle, Skye."
"It's a miracle I'm alive," I countered, embarrassed at the flat out admiration in his gaze. "And that's all because of you and Marlin and everyone who gave me a chance. I wasn't living before. I'm alive now."
He looked like he wanted to press me for more, but I rolled over to face the wall.
It was too much. I didn't deserve any of it, but I was too happy to let on how deeply it affected me and how badly I wanted to keep feeling that way.
It took me several days before I felt well enough to get out of bed and move around the estate. I haunted the kitchen, feeding myself with slices of pie that the cook prepared. She used the wood fired oven, and told me that the whole town had decided, along with the nymphs, to keep technology alive and in good working order, but only to use when necessary and never for convenience or at the risk of others.
I was impressed.
"Sounds like a compromise a certain magician would make," I said to her and she smiled.
"Ask him yourself," Lance said, striding toward me with a piece of jam-covered toast in his fist.
The cook discreetly excused herself and I felt awkward, like I was naked. He kept sneaking looks toward my stomach where Hunter's sword had cut into me.
My hand went to the raw and wormy scar on my belly that was hidden beneath one of Marlin's loose Tragically Hip teeshirts.
"I haven't seen him this morning," I said and fumbled for the coffee pot. The smell of the heady bean swirled around my head as I tilted the pot over a pottery mug.
I leaned against the sideboard and held it in both hands, letting the steam mist my hair.
He inched closer, and despite my twin desires to both grab for his collar and yank him closer and dart off like a frightened squirrel, I held my ground, watching him come toward me. He reached past me, grasping the cream pitcher as it sat behind me on the counter. He poured a good dollop into my mug all while watching my face.
"He's busy with the envoys," he said.
I shifted against the counter, nervous and uncertain.
"Envoys?"
"Several of them," he said and canted his head at me as I lifted the mug to my mouth. "The first of them arrived at dawn. They're still coming. New Topeka was first, then New Albuquerque. New New Mexico. New New York. More are at the gate even now."
I couldn't draw my eyes from his face. I felt like he was charming me, that he was worried I'd strike out when he least expected it. I put the mug down and laid my hands along the edge of the counter. My throat ached. I felt as though the room was spinning.
"What do they want?" I asked, only mildly more interested in a new influx of people than the way he was crowding me, slowly, methodically. He smelled of soap and smoke. There was determination in his gaze.
"They want to make you a queen, Skye. A voted in queen and they're ready to swear allegiance to you today."
I gasped. "But I'm not a queen. I'm no more than a—"
He put his finger on my lips. "Don't say it. Don't ever say it again. You're the bearer of Excalibur. The leader of the Order of the Charred Table. You're the woman who sacrificed herself to save this town."
He leaned close, so close I could kiss him if I dared let myself give in. I could smell the strawberries in his stubble. I could imagine the way his buzzed hair would feel against my palms if I reached out to touch him.
"If people expect me to be kind and loving and imperial, they should know I'm not given to bouts of softness."
He chuckled low in his throat.
"Who wants a damsel for a queen?" he said. "Give me a woman hard as iron any day. It's not malleable like copper, or tin that can smelted out with a minimum of heat. It needs to be raised to extreme temperatures to find its perfection."
His hands slipped around my waist, tentatively, as though he was waiting for me to resist.
"You're iron, Skye. The town needs iron. The nation needs it. And they want you."
"And what do you want?" I dared to say but only because his gaze had taken the place of his finger and his hands had already pulled me closer. I was astounded to find my arms creeping to his waist.
"What I've always wanted," he said. "To be the one to quench the fire that frees you."
"And when will that be?" I said. "When will I be free?"
He grinned and lowered his mouth to mine, resting his mouth there like a moth lands on a piece of linen. Our breath mingled, the warmth making my face flush.
"The iron always decides," he said against my lips. "And a good smith never forgets that."
"You've told me before you're a patient smithy," I said, teasing. "But are you a good one?"
"I'm the best, Queen Skye. The best."
<<
If you loved this series, there are more stories and more characters to be found in my library.
You might enjoy a nice binge-able story about Witches
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Sword of Honor | -1-
-2-
-3-
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Sword of Truth | -1-
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-4-
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Sword of Justice | -1-
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Queen of Skye and Shadow complete box set : Queen of Skye and Shadow Omnibus books 1-3 Page 32
